REVIEWS Garcia Banana 43

Shipyard GARCIA YACHTING

Shipyard : GARCIA YACHTING / Length : 13m

Banana 43 catamaran : The 'no limits’ multihull

In just two examples, this Marc Fazilleau-designed catamaran has already made an impression on the little world of multihulls, through its happy owners’ long-term voyages. So when, in a market which is highly formatted by the major productions, this atypical design fell into the hands of a French builder which had forged its reputation over 40 years, building aluminium blue-water boats, our curiosity, already aroused, reached fever pitch. A test of Garcia’s Banana 43 catamaran in the Channel, at the end of June, in the warm sunshine of Cherbourg...

An
ease of handling singlehanded, which we immediately rediscovered aboard ‘Mandala’,
the Banana 43 catamaran we were testing. On first contact, from the pontoon close to the
boatyard, its silhouette seemed really quite bulky. Forty three feet; here we
really are at the bottom of the range of sizes suitable for long-term cruising
on catamaran, and you need a bit of volume when you want to live aboard with no
time limit. But the Land Rover wouldn’t win any prizes for beauty either. It’s the
practical nature which has made it a myth, not only allowing its rather cubic
lines to be forgotten, but also raising it to the status of an icon, on which
we wouldn’t change anything for the world, not the slightest degree of the
bonnet angle or of the slope of the windscreen. Isn’t it a bit the same with
the Banana 43 catamaran, whose lines, and the name of course, are reminiscent of a famous
yellow boat? Yes, of course you know it, the one belonging to a famous French
singer who didn’t want to get his hair cut, and who indirectly promotes the
aluminium catamaran all around the world, through a profusion of books and dvds. (Antoine,
aboard his catamaran, called Banana Split)...